1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a handsfree apparatus establishing connection with a cellular phone by using a handsfree communication protocol and determining whether the cellular phone connected with the handsfree apparatus is receiving an incoming call.
2. Description of Related Art
There is known an in-vehicle handsfree apparatus establishing connection with a cellular phone carried into a vehicle to provide a Hands-Free function (cf. JP-A-2006-94477). JP-A-2005-260822 corresponding to US-A-2005-0202852 discloses an in-vehicle handsfree apparatus described as follows. When the in-vehicle handsfree apparatus is connected with a cellular phone carried into a vehicle by using the Hands-Free Profile and when the cellular phone receives an incoming call, the in-vehicle handsfree apparatus causes a display unit to display information about the incoming call of the cellular phone or causes a speaker to output a ring tone, thereby to inform a user that the cellular phone is receiving the incoming call. Further, the in-vehicle handsfree apparatus causes the display unit to form an information item for a user operation on the incoming call. The information items is, for example, an incoming call answer switch for answering the incoming call or the incoming call reject switch for rejecting the incoming call.
Recently, some persons have multiple cellular phones, which are for personal use and for business use for instance. In view of this trend, the inventors have studied an in-vehicle handsfree apparatus that is connectable with or establishes multi-profile connection with multiple cellular phones at the same time by using the Hands-Free Profile, so that, even when the multiple cellular phones are carried into a vehicle, the handsfree apparatus can be ready to receive incoming calls of the multiple cellular phones.
As a related art, discussion is presented below on an in-vehicle handsfree apparatus connectable with multiple cellular phones by using the Hands-Free Profile. A possible situation is such that the multiple cellular phones connected with the in-vehicle handsfree apparatus are receiving incoming calls at the same time. In such a situation, a user needs to recognize the incoming calls received by the multiple cellular phones at the same time. Further, a user needs to distinctly recognize the incoming calls of the multiple cellular phones and perform an operation for answering or rejecting one or more of the incoming calls of the multiple cellular phones. However, there is not known an in-vehicle handsfree apparatus that can properly support the above situation.